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Suppose we suddenly re-define "water" to be known as "wet water", and we re-define "oil" to be "water". If we did this, people in the future would be confused reading the literature of the past. Just such a thing happened in the case of the word "waltz", which was renamed "Viennese waltz", whereas the "Boston" eventually evolved into what competition dancers today know as the "waltz". The earliest descriptions of the Boston can be found in the old books at http:// memory.loc.gov/ ammem/ dihtml/ dihome.html. The Boston originated in America, but was also done in England. A description from London in 1910 is as follows [1, p.31-32] : There are different kinds of "Boston". There is the one that comes direct from America, which I will presently describe, and there is the "Parisian Boston," which is quite a different thing, consisting for the most part of running backwards and forwards in turning the shoulders. Then there is the popular conception of the "Boston," which seems to be that you can do whatever you please and call it the "Boston," on the assumption that others don't know anything more about the matter than you do yourself. Suppose, for instance, you are apt to get into a muddle with your steps, suppose you kick or crush your partner's toes. Should she inquire: "Whatever are you doing?" you simply say: "I'm doing the Boston." That ought to silence her. But suppose it does not, and she says: "Well, please don't do it again," you have only to go on until you once more come to grief. Then you can excuse yourself by explaining: "Oh, that was the 'Half-Time Slither,' the 'Running Waltz', or the 'Boston Skid.' " It will be readily seen that this kind of "Boston" is merely a euphemism for bad waltzing. of quote A more explicit description of the timing, at least as it evolved in England, is given in [2, p.21]: "The rhythm or relative time duration in the Boston was not dactylic (long, short, short) as in the Waltz see what he means click [http://waltzballs.org/vw.html#nt here] but all three steps were of equal time length and, moreover, occupied two bars of music. The six steps necessary for the full turn thus took four bars of music--twice the time required for the Rotary Waltz." The most common waltz music at this time was Viennese waltz music at 60 bars per minute. The Boston was danced to this music at half this speed, no easy feat. Thus, in two bars of music 123123 steps would be taken on 1x3x2x. Later, slow waltz music would be written for it at 30 bars per minute. Slow music in 3/4 time had been readily available for many decades in continental Europe to dance the polka mazur, not the slow waltz. From the available recordings, one would infer that the polka mazur was commonly played at 30-40 bars per minute, not only the 30 bars per minute of the slow waltz. The polka mazur was called the polka mazurka in the English speaking world. Since the polka mazur never caught on in the English speaking world, the music was not often played in England and America, and early slow waltzers had to make do with dancing to every other beat in fast waltz music. It is perhaps significant that the Boston developed in countries where there was considerable opposition to balls in general and to the waltz in particular. Before 1900 a well known expression "banned in Boston" referred to the many things that had been banned in Boston. Perhaps the waltz was banned in Boston and the Boston dance invented as a different dance that could be done to waltz music. The Boston was apparently sometimes referred to by the British as the slow waltz. Grove in 1895 [3, p.420] refers to American waltz variations such as the "Hop-waltz", "Slow-waltz" and the "Lurch". I met a lady who moved from the Soviet Union to America in 1978. She said that the slow waltz was referred to where she came from as the "Boston waltz". One can easily purchase 100 hours of recorded dance music from the 1800's with no repeated tunes. About a third of this music is called "waltz". It is Viennese waltz, not slow waltz, not redowa. People who claim popularity for the slow waltz or the redowa in the 1800's should point to a similar volume of music written for their chosen dance. The final form of the slow waltz is sometimes referred to as the "diagonal waltz" [2, p.41]. This diagonal configuration made it easier and more graceful, but made it almost exclusively a competition dance, not a social dance. 1. Scott, Edward. The New Dancing As it Should Be. London, 1910. 2. Silvester, Victor. Modern Ballroom Dancing. London, 1992. The author was already dead when this edition came out. Material from his earlier book "The Art of the Ballroom", 1936, was added and is what is quoted here. 3. Grove, Lilly. Dancing. London 1895.